“Swordquest” #0

Swordquest, a property with a history that sounds like it’s out of a comic book gets a comic book that could only be a comic book.

Cover by Goni Montes

Written by Chad Bowers and Chris Sims
Illustrated by Scott Kowalchuk
Colored by Karl Fan
Lettered by Josh Krach

Peter Case was a boy on a quest. The quest to win the prizes from Atari’s SwordQuest challenge! He was counting down the days to the release of the final game, AirWorld, only to be shattered when the news surfaced that it would never be released. Now Peter is an adult…and things aren’t going well. The bad news is he has to move back in with his mother. The good news is she still has all of his old Atari stuff. With nothing else to look forward to, his obsession with SwordQuest is reignited, in a more…ummm, interesting way…

Written by Chad Bowers and Chris Sims (X-Men ’92, Down Set Fight) and art by Scott Kowalchuk (Batman ’66, Down Set Fight). This is the SwordQuest comic we’ve been waiting for since 1983!

With works like the recently published “Youngblood” reboot and their work together on “X-Men ’92,” co-writers Chad Bowers and Chris Sims have developed a niche for themselves in working with pre-established IP. In both cases those works relied on an earnest examination and articulation of each series’ strengths. These previous endeavors, one being part of a comic that marked a shift in the industry and one of the most well-known adaptations of the “X-Men” franchise, are nothing quite like “Swordquest,” both in terms of content or IP history. The fact everything is pulled of so well is proof of their, and artist Scott Kowalchuk’s, craftmanship and commitment to doing something different.

The story behind the source material for this comic series is like something out of a comic book. “Swordquest” as the cover implies is inspired by the Swordquest video game series from Atari, or at least most of those video games since the series never actually finished.  Unlike those previously mentioned works, this new series isn’t a continuation of the comic series (which was produced surprisingly by the likes of Roy Thomas, Gerry Conway, George Perez, and Dick Giordana) that existed to promote the series of games.

Bowers and Sims treat the game, and the contest that drove it, as a mixture of historical artifact and meta-text for this new “Swordquest” comic.  Lead, Peter Case participated in that contest to win the titular sword but never got a chance to finish his journey after the Great Video Game crash of 1983. Now years and one terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day later, Case finds himself wistfully remembering a time when things were better.

Nostalgia is a tricky subject. It’s a highly personal one making its appeals to some sort of utopian pass, oxymoronic. In most cases, you don’t get the full definition of the word in works that would be considered nostalgic. Don Draper is right during his presentation in ‘The Wheel’ that nostalgia comes from an “ache”(algia),  but he fails to bring up the other part of the word neomai which roughly means “to go home.”

Our (mainstream) media landscape is dominated by the latter articulating, re-articulating, and rebooting, before inevitably remixing established properties in order to play towards that sense of homecoming with all of the sub textual sentimental baggage. Allowing producers to eternally play the hits as it were. Without both halves, you don’t really have a word, or the true feeling of nostalgia. “Swordquest” #0 is one of the few pieces that gets at both halves of the word.

“Swordquest” #0 is nostalgic at a very central level due to the point of view of lead character Peter Case, a sad sack GenXer stuck in a mundane office job. The issue has him both literally in pain and moving back into Mom’s house. These things when mixed with other more typical elements that express the wistful recollection of a supposed utopian past have this book squarely in the nostalgia corner. However, in labeling what Bower, Sims, and Kowalchuk have created as a work of “nostalgia” is to perhaps paint this issue with too broad a brush and weigh it with unnecessary baggage.

This surface level nostalgia is frankly, the least affecting part of the book for me. I have no connection to the specific ennui associated with Generation X, or a connection to that era of video games beyond a historical curiosity. In focusing on the inherent nostalgia created and fueling “Swordquest” is to lose sight of what the creative team have done with it, which is to use that unconscious desire as a wrapper for a reflexive reading experience that makes this reader wonder: Am I reading the Fight Club of video game comic books?

The reflexive elements of the book undercut and call into question that wistful utopian memory Case associates with his boyhood days. Bower and Sims use as a foundation for their text not just the historical facts surrounding the unfinished Swordquest adventure series, but the marketing surrounding that series. They bake in motifs like “Game Tips” from video game magazines as storytelling devices. Normal video game HUD elements are used like comic onomatopoeia, commenting on Case’s physical health and life score. The color job, a mixture of Kowalchuk with Karl Flan on flats, is a bit too neon to be capital ‘R’ retro (like most elements in this book), but manages to evoke a simplicity and solidity found in the coloring of comics from the ’80s.

The same is true for Kowalchuk’s art, with its uneven inks and cartooned style is more akin to the underground comics than the old “Swordquest” comics. The largely minimal art style has surprising amount of emotive potential, when mixed with these other elements. Individually these elements exist to reference something else but never fully replicate them, creating a dissonance in the flow, like the scratch on a CD causing it to skip. That dissonance doesn’t let you fully empathize with Case, it just calls into question the nature of his character.

Even without all the other reflexive elements, the traditional flashback sequence of Case’s experience playing Swordquest: Fire World features a disruption of the utopian male power fantasy the younger him projected with the realities of gaming with friends. Calling into question his recollection of events.

If it weren’t for the fact our lead is named, the general Fight Club vibe would be more pronounced. Well that, and the inability to make “Where is My Mind?” by the Pixies magically start playing once you finish the issue.

Reading Tip: Que up cool songs ahead of time to make your reading experience better.

For all the fun postmodern elements of “Swordquest” there is a clear story issue 0 effectively sets up with well-timed emotional beats. The nostalgia and dissonant elements in this issue exist to make us question if this quest is righteous. Is Case is a hero or a narcissist. But the overall structure of it isn’t as weird as the book at first portends.

Final Verdict: 8.0 – This is a great introductory issue that sets everything up nicely, on top of a postmodern view.